Marathon bomber's body entombed in undisclosed location

WORCESTER, Mass. (Reuters) - The body of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been entombed and is no longer in the city of Worcester, Mass., where it had been held at a funeral home, the Worcester Police Department said Thursday.

The police did not disclose where the body had been moved.

The 26-year-old ethnic Chechen died in an April 19 gun battle with police, four days after he and his younger brother Dzhokhar are suspected of having set off bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured 264.

The question of where to bury the elder Tsarnaev had proven to be a thorny one, with city officials in Boston and in Cambridge, Mass., where he had lived, refusing to accept the body for burial.

A crowd had picketed outside the Worcester funeral home where the body had been held since it was claimed from the medical examiner last week.

"A courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance to properly bury the deceased," Worcester police said in a statement posted on the department's Web page.